Went up McKinley Street again today. This time I got down on the
drops as soon as I was past the rough pavement under the railroad and
sprinted properly.

In less than half a block, I was completely out of breath and had to
ease off.

I did the rest of the ten-mile ride at my usual relaxed pace. Took
about five hours, but included at least four prolonged stops.

I was in some alarm when, while I was dressing, the scanner said that
Argonne would be closed for fifteen minutes. When Argonne is closed,
the only alternate route is McKinley. But Argonne was open again
before I got all my layers on.

To avoid the noise, microbial growth, limed-up belts, and so forth of
a mechanical humidifier, we keep a pot of hot water on the stove.
Aside from buying a new enamel pot every two or three years, it's also
free: in humidifier season, every bit of gas we burn on the stove is
gas we don't need to burn in the furnace.

I just figured out that if I drop a cake rack into the humidifier and
set my bottle of water on the rack, it will be nicely warmed by the
time I finish dressing. This postpones freezing for quite a while --
and makes me more inclined to drink enough water.

-----------------------------------------

On last Thursday's "Modified Dump Tour" I topped off my bottle with
hot water from the coffee machine at the hospital, but today there was
nothing but chilled water available for refills.

I went to Sprawlmart to buy a head of cabbage and some saltines. Alas,
either Aldi had no whole-wheat saltines or I couldn't see them. But I
did stock up on bread at Aunt Millie's Outlet, and top off our
Sandwich-Skinny supply at Aldi.

I'd intended to go the long way and have lunch at the Oddfellow Cafe
in Pierceton, but there was an open studio I didn't want to miss in
the afternoon. I partly made up for the missed miles by walking to
the studio and coming back the long way.

Oh, man, am I looking forward to carrying multiple bottles and filling
them with ice. Despite being warmly dressed, I tire quickly in the
cold, and stopping for a nap in the graveyard is right out.
(Graveyards are the only place where one can lie down in public
without attracting ambulances. They are not, alas, spaced at
convenient intervals.)

--
joy beeson at comcast dot nethttp://wlweather.net/PAGESEW/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.

To avoid the noise, microbial growth, limed-up belts, and so forth of
a mechanical humidifier, we keep a pot of hot water on the stove.
Aside from buying a new enamel pot every two or three years, it's also
free: in humidifier season, every bit of gas we burn on the stove is
gas we don't need to burn in the furnace.

I just figured out that if I drop a cake rack into the humidifier and
set my bottle of water on the rack, it will be nicely warmed by the
time I finish dressing. This postpones freezing for quite a while --
and makes me more inclined to drink enough water.

I would ask if a humidifier is actually necessary?

I ask as I was born and grew up in a small village in up-state New
Hampshire and we certainly never had a humidifier, nor did anyone else
I knew.

To avoid the noise, microbial growth, limed-up belts, and so forth of
a mechanical humidifier, we keep a pot of hot water on the stove.
Aside from buying a new enamel pot every two or three years, it's also
free: in humidifier season, every bit of gas we burn on the stove is
gas we don't need to burn in the furnace.

I just figured out that if I drop a cake rack into the humidifier and
set my bottle of water on the rack, it will be nicely warmed by the
time I finish dressing. This postpones freezing for quite a while --
and makes me more inclined to drink enough water.

I would ask if a humidifier is actually necessary?

I ask as I was born and grew up in a small village in up-state New
Hampshire and we certainly never had a humidifier, nor did anyone else
I knew.

I grew up in and returned to Eastern Ontario, which is slightly colder and
drier than NH.

Humidifiers are a good idea if you are vulnerable to some respiratory
problems. They also help the piano to stay in tune and to keep the antique
furniture together. As a kid, we had the tank, wick and fan humidifier
that was your best option if you had radiators. It put a half gallon or so
each day into the house, and yet the humidity never got above 45%. Since I
lived on the third storey and as far from the humidifier as one could get,
it was not uncommon to wake up with a crusty nose.

Now, with a forced air HVAC system, our humidifier is built into it. I
have no idea how much water it goes through.
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)

To avoid the noise, microbial growth, limed-up belts, and so forth of
a mechanical humidifier, we keep a pot of hot water on the stove.
Aside from buying a new enamel pot every two or three years, it's also
free: in humidifier season, every bit of gas we burn on the stove is
gas we don't need to burn in the furnace.

I just figured out that if I drop a cake rack into the humidifier and
set my bottle of water on the rack, it will be nicely warmed by the
time I finish dressing. This postpones freezing for quite a while --
and makes me more inclined to drink enough water.

I would ask if a humidifier is actually necessary?

I ask as I was born and grew up in a small village in up-state New
Hampshire and we certainly never had a humidifier, nor did anyone else
I knew.

I grew up in and returned to Eastern Ontario, which is slightly colder and
drier than NH.

Humidifiers are a good idea if you are vulnerable to some respiratory
problems. They also help the piano to stay in tune and to keep the antique
furniture together. As a kid, we had the tank, wick and fan humidifier
that was your best option if you had radiators. It put a half gallon or so
each day into the house, and yet the humidity never got above 45%. Since I
lived on the third storey and as far from the humidifier as one could get,
it was not uncommon to wake up with a crusty nose.

Now, with a forced air HVAC system, our humidifier is built into it. I
have no idea how much water it goes through.

Same here in Montréal. It's not exactly dry here but with a forced air
HVAC system the house was extremely dry before we changed furnaces and the
new one had a built in humidifier.

To avoid the noise, microbial growth, limed-up belts, and so forth of
a mechanical humidifier, we keep a pot of hot water on the stove.
Aside from buying a new enamel pot every two or three years, it's also
free: in humidifier season, every bit of gas we burn on the stove is
gas we don't need to burn in the furnace.

I just figured out that if I drop a cake rack into the humidifier and
set my bottle of water on the rack, it will be nicely warmed by the
time I finish dressing. This postpones freezing for quite a while --
and makes me more inclined to drink enough water.

I would ask if a humidifier is actually necessary?

I ask as I was born and grew up in a small village in up-state New
Hampshire and we certainly never had a humidifier, nor did anyone else
I knew.

I grew up in and returned to Eastern Ontario, which is slightly colder and
drier than NH.

Humidifiers are a good idea if you are vulnerable to some respiratory
problems. They also help the piano to stay in tune and to keep the antique
furniture together. As a kid, we had the tank, wick and fan humidifier
that was your best option if you had radiators. It put a half gallon or so
each day into the house, and yet the humidity never got above 45%. Since I
lived on the third storey and as far from the humidifier as one could get,
it was not uncommon to wake up with a crusty nose.

Now, with a forced air HVAC system, our humidifier is built into it. I
have no idea how much water it goes through.

Hmmm.. Well, we had a piano, my mother played and my younger brother
played well enough that he made music his career. I don't remember
anyone complaining about the piano going out of tune every winter :-)

During my military career I was stationed at Edwards AFB where it
rains perhaps once every year or so and later in Southern California
where it seldom rains, and again I don't remember humidifiers being in
use.

On Sun, 05 Feb 2017 16:24:02 +0700, John B.
wrote:
I would ask if a humidifier is actually necessary?

I suspect that you'd be more likely to need a de-humidifier.

Both of us get nosebleeds if the humidity isn't high enough, and his
are a laundry problem.

When we heated with a wood stove, the house didn't get dried out as
much as it did with central heat. It was also more comfortable,
because the sitting rooms were warmer than the working rooms.

My grandfather made a humidifier consisting of a narrow trough that
went between the coils of the radiator, with a small tank at the end.
I don't remember my parents doing anything about humidity. But we
lived in the kitchen and didn't heat the upstairs.

I suppose that our forced air would have dried the house more than
Grandfather's radiators.

Both of us get nosebleeds if the humidity isn't high enough, and his
are a laundry problem.

When we heated with a wood stove, the house didn't get dried out as
much as it did with central heat. It was also more comfortable,
because the sitting rooms were warmer than the working rooms.

My grandfather made a humidifier consisting of a narrow trough that
went between the coils of the radiator, with a small tank at the end.
I don't remember my parents doing anything about humidity. But we
lived in the kitchen and didn't heat the upstairs.

I suppose that our forced air would have dried the house more than
Grandfather's radiators.

When I was a kid both my grandparents still cooked and heated their
houses with wood stoves although they both had kerosene stoves for
cooking with when it was hot in the summer.

I remember my father's mother once complaining because my grandfather
hadn't split one of the required types of cooking wood :-) It seems
that to properly cook on a wood stove one requires two types of wood.

But back to heating, both grandparents actually heated the kitchen and
life in the "winter" was in the kitchen. Neither of them heated
bedrooms although my paternal grandparents had a stove "in the front
room" for "when people came to call"..

When one tells these kinds of stories now people look at you like you
are describing life on some distant planet :-) But strangely enough
people didn't seem to feel deprived of anything... that was just how
life was. But, I suppose that future generations may look back at
these times and wonder how anyone could get along without an
automobile that drives itself?

Totally off subject.

Do you know anything about permanent pressed shirts? By any name?

I ask as we are now retired and I don't work and my wife, of forty
years, is slowing down a bit too :-) I currently wear knit "golf"
shirts to reduce the ironing burden, but recently have been in a
couple of situations where I would have preferred to present a little
better image than Levi's and a golf shirt and was thinking of short
sleeve shirts with collars but they would need to be pressed after
washing and then I remembered "stay-pressed", or some such name,
shirts that supposedly didn't require ironing.

Looking on the Internet I find such things for $80 or $90 each, which
is a pretty large price when converted to local currency and have
asked at a couple of the larger department stores where everyone looks
at each in wonder. "What will these foreigners think of next?"

Any advise or information on the subject will be most greatly
appreciated.
--
Cheers,

On Mon, 06 Feb 2017 13:59:07 +0700, John B.
wrote:
Do you know anything about permanent pressed shirts? By any name?

My information is at least forty years out of date.

When I was reading housewives' professional magazines as a teenager, I
wondered why so much fuss was made about the difficulty of ironing
shirts -- surely ironing a white shirt couldn't be any harder than
ironing a white blouse. After marrying a teacher, I learned that
shirts are easier to iron than blouses -- but you have to iron at
least five of them every single week. I got through the stack by
timing myself, and trying to beat my previous time on every shirt. I
think I got it down to seven minutes.

Permanent press shirts had to be ironed anyway, because the
top-stitching puckered. But they were easier to iron than all-cotton
shirts, and didn't rumple when worn, so we bought perma-press.

I made all his sports shirts, and left the collar button off because
he never fastened it.

(If a shirt was large enough in the neck, it hung on him everywhere
else. His current white shirt has the collar button sewn to a bit of
tape to make the neck bigger, and his tie hides the improvisation. I
don't remember what we did about it back then.)

The fabric I bought was thicker than dress-shirt fabric, hence more
perma-press -- I would squeeze a corner of the fabric in my hand, and
not buy it if I could press in wrinkles that way. I put the shirts
together with french seams and sewed the pockets on by hand, so that
there was no top-stitching. These shirts could be dried on a hanger
and worn without further ado.

Nowadays he wears mail-order shirts, and I don't iron them. This is
partly because serged (overlockered) seams have the virtues of french
seams, and partly because I'm not as fussy. I do tumble them in the
drier for a minute or two, then shake them thoroughly before drying
them on suit hangers. Hmm . . . I don't remember the last time I
found one of his woven sport shirts in the wash. He prefers henley
shirts now, and I think there are still some polo shirts around.

Polyester is intolerable if the temperate is above the lower end of
comfortable, and I'm pretty sure polyester is still the only fiber
that can be permanently pressed. I imagine that where you are,
perma-press would go over like a lead balloon.

When I was reading housewives' professional magazines as a teenager, I
wondered why so much fuss was made about the difficulty of ironing
shirts -- surely ironing a white shirt couldn't be any harder than
ironing a white blouse. After marrying a teacher, I learned that
shirts are easier to iron than blouses -- but you have to iron at
least five of them every single week. I got through the stack by
timing myself, and trying to beat my previous time on every shirt. I
think I got it down to seven minutes.

Permanent press shirts had to be ironed anyway, because the
top-stitching puckered. But they were easier to iron than all-cotton
shirts, and didn't rumple when worn, so we bought perma-press.

I made all his sports shirts, and left the collar button off because
he never fastened it.

(If a shirt was large enough in the neck, it hung on him everywhere
else. His current white shirt has the collar button sewn to a bit of
tape to make the neck bigger, and his tie hides the improvisation. I
don't remember what we did about it back then.)

The fabric I bought was thicker than dress-shirt fabric, hence more
perma-press -- I would squeeze a corner of the fabric in my hand, and
not buy it if I could press in wrinkles that way. I put the shirts
together with french seams and sewed the pockets on by hand, so that
there was no top-stitching. These shirts could be dried on a hanger
and worn without further ado.

Nowadays he wears mail-order shirts, and I don't iron them. This is
partly because serged (overlockered) seams have the virtues of french
seams, and partly because I'm not as fussy. I do tumble them in the
drier for a minute or two, then shake them thoroughly before drying
them on suit hangers. Hmm . . . I don't remember the last time I
found one of his woven sport shirts in the wash. He prefers henley
shirts now, and I think there are still some polo shirts around.

Polyester is intolerable if the temperate is above the lower end of
comfortable, and I'm pretty sure polyester is still the only fiber
that can be permanently pressed. I imagine that where you are,
perma-press would go over like a lead balloon.

Thanks for the information and yes, you are correct in that none of
the larger, up market, department stores admitted to ever hearing of
such a thing.

Re ironing, the climate here is such that one wears a shirt only one
day, and if I had an important meeting in the afternoon I might take
an extra shirt to the office in the morning.

I'm not sure exactly how much ironing my wife does, of her clothes,
excepting that I do know that hand woven silk, or silk - cotton,
requires special care,

Idle information: In Japan a "dress" kimono is taken apart - all the
sewing is removed - and the pieces are washed and dried separately,
then sewed back together.
--
Cheers,